ok I want to add a pants mesh under a dress mesh. the pants mesh is mine, the dress mesh isn't but adding to an existing mesh usually isn't an issue. however, I create my sub-mesh, add my .xrf & .xmf files and get NOT extra material slots ? a bit of help here plz??

Question, is the new mesh rendering white and has no texture slots, or is it rendering with the materials of the dress?

If it is white and has no slots it can be two things.

First and easiest know Create Mode sometimes will not initially see new material slots when you add a sub mesh. So first apply the new mesh, save the work, re-open it from your projects list and hope they will appear. If they do Yay!

If that doesn’t work then there is probably a problem with the mesh’s material naming convention and that needs fixed in the mesh making program.

If it is rendering with the dress’s textures then the issue is that both meshes are using the same material IDs. In clothing and furniture additional meshes will share material IDs (Rooms you can stack them)

If you made the pants mesh then it’s a simple matter of opening it back up and re-assigning its materials

The [0] [1] [2] Stuff to numbers that are not being used in the dress.

Re-export load and you should have new material slots available. Again, Create Mode sometimes will not see these new slots. When that happens save the work, reopen it from your projects list and they will appear.

If this is not a mesh you made, easiest is to ask (beg, bribe) the maker if they can make you an alternate version with different material IDs.

If they can’t do that then you are left with the worst option, manually editing the code of the .xmf. This will only work if the .xmf is not encrypted.

Open the .xmf in a text reader (Notepad on Windows).

If it is legible, proceed, if it is not you won’t be able to edit it and only the mesh maker can fix it.

<SUBMESH NUMVERTICES="38" NUMFACES="51" NUMLODSTEPS="0" NUMSPRINGS="0" NUMMORPHS="0" NUMTEXCOORDS="1" MATERIAL="0">
You want to change that MATERIAL="0"> (May not be 0 in your case) to another number not being used in the textures of the outfit you are adding too.

You will have to scroll though the whole .xmf to find all of the places that is listed and change it. If it has more than one material you will have to change them all to new unique numbers.

This is very much a last resort situation, as any typo will break the mesh.

yes well closing and opening didn't work lol and I am using diff. numbers for the sub-mesh so shouldn't have a conflict. here is what I am working with. as u can see, her sub-mesh's go from 90-94. as I want to put on pants that is the 5 area and can be unmarked as it not being used but that didn't help. and I tried adding sub-mesh's in the 80's and re-tried with 95. neither way was adding that extra material slot I need.

By the screenshots the dress is using materials 0-5 as well as 7 (7 is always reserved untouched for skin swapping to function propperly). So the pants will need to use 6 or 8 or higher. (They don't have to be sequential numbers, just different than what is being already used.)

A test would be derive from the empty clothing derivable, add the pants, apply changes, then look to see what material numbers it creates. If it is using 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 that is where your conflict is coming from with that dress.

yes keef but the 5 can be un-checked to show that it's unused and the default shorts appear. so I SHOULD be able to put the pants there or use a different ID like in the 80's and just add my pants as a sub-mesh and normally that opens up more material ID slots. without having to go in and change everything in the editor. like I can add them to a shirt no prob, and a dress is just basicly a shirt that is long lol

yes lol that what I mean sorry I keep seeing them as the same when I type. ok I got the mes to go on and give me 1 material slot but it is poking through the dress. so now I have to fig out how to fix that because just the opacity change isn't fixing that lol